Listen to your heart (a woman's view)

(Below, I am posting a reaction to my June 2 piece from a reader and a dear friend.)

David, tonight's writing is a challenge. The gauntlet is thrown. What is the use of existence past the end of relationship because the pain of transition is so hard? And review of the pattern -- that three great loves each ended rather than continuing gives strength to the argument that love is a terrible tragedy, one that ends utterly without hope or any reason to go on at all. Right up against a wall, unable to negotiate change or adaptation or making it work together.

I think it is only in the past few years, in my 50s, that I came to understand that men are romantic and women are not. In our twenties, it was women who pined for men who always wanted space. Women wanted definition and assurance of continuance, development and progression. However, amongst the people I've known for decades, it is now the men who are reaching out and trying for more, with women unconvinced sitting on the sidelines.

I've wondered if this is partly due to the biological drive women experience in their 20s and 30s to bear children, seeking partnership and securing permanence. After everything is said and done, it now seems as though the women are more alone and partly content in that -- the reverse of how I remembered night after night after night as a 20- and 30-year-old, anguishing in what wasn't.

You talk of voice -- never before have I heard your voice as clearly as now.

You have always exhibited a huge sense of adulthood. You were always about perspective. And you have always drawn huge connections -- you spoke of patterns earlier on in your writing. I see the struggle with survival that drives your writing. Those of us with the highs and lows know about this and share the purpose of staying in being as opposed to any other choice. I support you and your continuing to define for the rest of us what not only affects you but many of us. You do us a favor by documenting the process of change and development. Your current transition is so gut level, and your rumination provides us with the platform for examination. I've always considered myself lucky to know you for many many reasons. This is even more true now.

Tamara